Friday, 9 January 2015

shocking?

The collected work at MONA focuses on the
visceral, the ritualistic and the mythological (with some post-modern ‘Disneyland’
thrown in); picking up a rich thread in modern and contemporary art and tying
it back to ancient Egyptian artifacts and the like. We are meant to be shocked
– by the building’s unexpectedness, by the lack of labels on the work, by the
refusal of ‘artwank’ and by the work itself.

It is, of course, an artificial controversy
(one that Walsh himself only seems often bored by). We have already had, after
all ‘ the shock of the new’ of modern art, and it is nearly 20 years since Saatchi’s
Sensation show spotlighting the supposedly notorious Young British Artists (the
YBAs) and their enthusiasm for the distasteful and bloody.

Walsh’s collection, though, brings that attitude
decidedly into the 21st century and into the act of collecting and
displaying work itself. The current guest exhibition is Matthew Burney’s Riverof Fundament, which seems a perfect fit. Other large permanent pieces such as
Anselm Kiefer’s Sherivath ha Kelim, give
some organizational structure to the space. This has it’s own pavilion (entered
via a long dark and musical concrete pipe, which suddenly spits you out into
really unexpected daylight).It is also
a ‘classic’ marker of the kind of work on show. For, despite all the hype, the
work on show is both an incredibly coherent selection - whether you like it or
not- of where much contemporary art has been going.

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Welcome!

Welcome to Sydney below the Surf/ace. As an outsider - only here for a year - I want to capture those small everyday differences that make this place what it is, and see a side to the city that is more than its tourist image of sun, beach and surfing - although, of course, I will be looking at those things too.